1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates broadly to methods, systems and apparatus for facilitating electronic commerce. More particularly, this invention relates to methods, systems and apparatus for matching buyers and sellers of goods and services.
2. State of the Art
Electronic commerce systems (such as online marketplaces, online auction houses, online reverse auction houses) provide a mechanism for matching sellers with buyers for facilitating transactions related to goods and services. For reverse auctions, there can be a significant number of potential sellers that can meet the demands of a respective buyer. This unbalance can have negative effects such as:
too much competition among sellers;
an overflow of offers submitted from sellers to a respective buyer and a low conversion ratio of acceptance of such offers by buyers;
a reduced quality of offers submitted from sellers to a respective buyer; and
a perception by the sellers who submit offers that the lowest priced offer will be accepted by the buyer.
Electronic commerce systems proposed in the prior art (for example, the system described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,647,373 to Carlton-Foss) facilitate reverse auctions for goods and/or services, yet fail to address the problems that arise from the unbalance as set forth above, where there are a significant number of potential sellers that can meet the demands of a respective buyer, and where there are other factors apart from price (such as quality of the service or product offered by the seller, reputation of the seller, etc.) that may affect the decision of the buyer. In such situations, the buyer can receive an overwhelming number of offers, which makes it difficult and time-consuming to identify the most appropriate seller. It also makes it unpractical for sellers as they have to compete with a large number of other sellers, which significantly reduces the conversion ratio of accepted offers by sellers. Such reduced conversion ratios can negatively impact the reverse auction process as sellers spend time and effort preparing and submitting offers that are rejected by buyers, which can deflate the moral of the sellers and lower the quality of the offers submitted by sellers to buyers as part of the process.
Several commercially-available online systems (such as elance.com and guru.com) have attempted to address these issues by limiting the number of offers sellers can make based on a tier system and/or by terminating the offer submission process when a certain number of offers have been submitted to the buyer. These systems are limited in their benefit to a buyer because the matching process favors sellers that submit offers quickly and does not attempt to aid the buyer in receiving better suited offers for the desired goods and/or services.
Thus, there remains a need in the art for improved methods, systems and apparatus for facilitating electronic commerce involving matching buyers and sellers of good and services, and particularly where such matching is part of a reverse auction process.